Integration with Geometry Nodes

[Clonkh]

Hello there,

the Blender Devs currently integrate everything they update well with geometry nodes to create one highly flexible software with a uniform UI/UX. CAD Sketcher has real potential but it would be a shame if it wouldn't be properly linked to Geometry Nodes but instead would become an abomination of menus and spreadsheets like pre 2.8 Blender used to be. The design philosophy would be to keep this Addon as atomic as possible while benefiting from the vast toolset Blender already offers through proper integration.

That is easier said than done, though. CAD sketches can have parent/child relations between each other. That is a really powerful feature but makes integration into Geometry Nodes quite hard. A way to achieve that could be the introduction of 'Sketcher instances'. One Geometry Node Tree there could be multiple Instances of what has been created in CAD Sketcher. Those instances would be computed independantly to ensuere all parent/child relations between entites within each instance would work.

Here I did a simple node tree with some notes on how CAD Sketcher nodes could look like:

Summery...
What advantages do I see in CAD Sketcher nodes:

• Fewer singular objects messing up the 3D scene
• One 3D object can be driven by multiple sketches and becomes more akin to a CAD part
• With fewer 3D objects messing up the scene, it becomes more akin to a CAD assembly
• Making dimensions be funktions of each other using math nodes (no need to develop that feature as part of Sketcher)
• Creating all sorts of patterns like arrays, circular patterns or even sketch-driven patterns (also no need to develop this anew)

Challenges:

• Making sure all the parent-child relations work properly
• So far I mostly thought about sketches and how they interact with each other. But entities can be planes as well. There might be issues to be solved I haven't thought of yet